Views of the Eastern Cemetery,
Highgate Cemetery, Swain's Lane, London. Stephen Geary
(1797-1854), James Bunstone Bunning (1802-1863), and David Ramsay
(nurseryman). Opened as an extension to the Western Cemetery on the
other side of Swain's Lane, Highgate, London N6 in 1855. The Eastern
Cemetery is quite different in character from the older Western
Cemetery.

Though still built into the
hillside, here there are no formal terraces or catacombs here.
Since the earlier part was designed, the Scottish landscape and
cemetery designer John Claudius Loudon had written his highly
influential book on the laying out of cemeteries, in which he
expressed his hearty dislike of "catacombs ... above the surface of
the ground" (54) for hygeinic reasons, and had almost nothing to say
about Highgate. He had simply commented on the great weight of the
leger-stones — the slabs on a grave that had to be lifted for a
subsequent burial in the same grave (see 27). He had, however, gone
into some detail about the more rambling Abney Park in Stoke Newington,
though even here he had been critical of the arrangement of the trees,
shrubs and flowerbeds (13). By the time it came to planning the
Eastern Cemetery, then, a more natural design was in vogue.

Photographs taken when all the
trees are in leaf. Loudon had been particularly struck by the
cemetery of Père-Lachaise in Paris — by "the
beauty of the garden, the variety of its walks, by the romantic nature
of its situation..." and had described it as "that vast grove of the
dead" (9). The Eastern Cemetery is much more like such a grove than
Père-Lachaise, though it would later be considerably outdone,
in terms of expanse and gracious woodland, by Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.

Rows of graves dappled by
sunlight. Loudon wrote movingly of the benefits of a garden
cemetery with monuments. He thought such places "not only beneficial
to
public morals, to the improvement of manners, but ... likewise
calculated to extend virtuous and generous feelings." He added that
"Affliction, brightened by hope, ever renders man more anxious to love
his neighbour. At the brink of the grave we are made most feelingly
alive to the shortness and uncertainty of life, and to the danger of
procrastinating towards God and man whatever it is our bounden duty to
perform. There, too, the conscience is taught the value of mercy, and
best feels the recompense which awaits the just in Heaven" (11).

First three photographs, commentary and formatting by
Jacqueline Banerjee.
Remaining photographs, in a different season, by Robert Freidus. All photographs
reproduced here by kind permission of Highgate Cemetery.